Tim Lawrence

The victorious anti-genocide resistance of the Greek island Syros! A report

300 protestors prevent an Israeli cruise liner from docking and its 1,600 Jewish-Israeli passengers from partying

23 July 2025

Greetings from Syros, where yesterday the people of the island plus warmly-welcomed visitors, mainly from Athens and at least two of us from London, Niki Orfanou and I, turned away a cruise ship carrying holiday-makers from the genocidal state of Israel for the first time in the island's history. The resistance was one of the most uplifting experiences of my life, a small yet nevertheless symbolic and reverberant victory I will never forget!

Niki and I arrived in Syros just over a week ago after visiting Niki’s parents on the mainland, as we do each summer. Before leaving I was conscious that we might well be confronted by Jewish-Israeli Zionists holidaying on the island given that they’ve been flooding Cyprus, waving flags in other cities and holiday destinations, plus buying up land just in case Israel, the land they claim such devotion to, becomes too inconvenient to live in for a while, as was the case during Iran’s recent retaliation. I packed my watermelon t-shirt, my Palestine-coloured baseball cap and my Palestine Solidarity Campaign tote bag plus badges, because I didn’t want to be meek in the face of fascistic aggression.

Over the weekend we indeed learned that an Israeli-owned cruise ship, the Crown Iris, that was carrying 1,600 Jewish-Israeli holiday makers to a group of Greek islands, was due to dock into Syros, population of 20,000, yesterday morning. About 300 of us gathered in the capital’s town square at 11:00am before heading to the port to begin our protest. As the organising group’s information leaflet noted, the citizens of Syros didn’t want to welcome Jewish-Israeli citizens who felt like having a good time while Israel commits a barbarous, unrelenting genocide in their name.

The very arrival of the cruise ship threatened the basic peacefulness of Syros. The government had placed what’s apparently become a routine curfew on the Nisaki area of the port where the cruise ship was due to dock, spending tax payer’s money to protect the endless needs of Jewish-Israelis (I write this as a Jew whose dad came out of Nazi Germany as a fifteen-year-old). Gathering “as residents of Syros, but mainly as people,” in the words of the organisers, the protestors demanded an end to the Greek government’s extensive participation “in the war crimes committed by the Israeli government.” Many also expressed concern at the anti-social behaviour displayed by previous Jewish-Israeli tourists.

From the start the protest was vocal, spirited and determined. In pauses between our chanting, we could hear the Jewish-Israeli passengers singing their own songs. It was clear that for them the party started with the Nakba, if not with the Balfour Declaration, and had only got better since the Israeli government began its genocide. Now they were in full voice. While I can’t speak for the response of all 1,600 passengers, the ones who stood on the ship’s outside areas responded to our own chants by becoming even more fervent, even more celebratory of their ethno-supremacist state’s colonialism, fascism, Nazism. They apparently found it invigorating that anyone might oppose their seizure of Palestinian land and systematic murder and starvation of its indigenous population.

Maybe because their approach to history is extremely selective, they also forgot the story of David and Goliath. In this case a couple of hundred of us were resolute in our decision that they would not land. The chances of us stopping the disembarkation seemed slight given that the docking area had been cordoned off and was protected by a fairly large police presence. However the people, united, were never going to be defeated.

First protestors used a huge Palestinian flag to block the coach that was scheduled to pick up the tourists from entering the port area, from where they were due be taken on a tour of the island. Inspired by this initial victory, the protestors then used several other large flags and banners to block the road that ran from the docking area to the island, thereby turning the local government’s attempt to “protect’ the holidaymakers into a weakness. There was simply no way for the Zionists, drunk on Palestinian blood, to leave the boat without having to walk on foot and be greeted by a wall of outraged opposition.

[NB On 27 August, responding to comments made by a friend on 26 August, I posted some thoughts on the phrase “Zionists, drunk on Palestinian blood” under the title “Is it antisemitic to refer to Zionists being ‘drunk on Palestinian blood?’”]

The chanting didn’t stop and every time a port official attempted to negotiate a way through for the unwelcome holidaymakers it intensified. When one manager tried to evade the blockade via a backstreet we subdivided to block the move with rising gusto. Protestors refilled water bottles with sea water to keep cool. Conversations unfolded under the increasingly intense afternoon sun that fortified our resolve and established a deep sense of solidarity and unity. Everybody was on the same page. There was no way we were going to move and would remain in position until the cruise liner went away.

At one point I suggested that the cruise liner sail to Germany instead of docking in Syros given that the Germans have shown themselves to be such big fans of genocide and have played their own particular role in the creation of the Zionist state as well as its sustenance—a judgement I feel able to make given that my dad came out of Nazi Germany as a fifteen-year-old Jew.

Some time later police officers donned helmets and shields. An attack on the protest seemed possible but not likely, the uniforms and equipment a kind of cosplay. The officers didn’t seem to be in the mood. Above all they were all part of a local community of just 20,000. Everyone knows everyone, more or less, on Syros. If they’d rammed the protest they’d have been shamed for life.

At just after 3:00pm, which was earlier than I think any of us expected, the port authorities loosened the cruise liner’s mooring ropes. The roar from within the heart and soul of the gathering was incredible. Then the ship started to move, not by going forwards but by reversing. Our chanting grew louder and louder as the genocide-sponsored vessel backed away.

When the Crown Iris slipped around the endpoint of the Nisaki area we walked around to the far side of the port to continue our singing, to wave goodbye to the fascists, to let them know that we couldn’t be happier that their self-entitled invasion of Syros had been resisted.

The Jewish-Israelis had long given up singing on their ship’s deck and it seemed likely they weren’t even singing inside, even if Jewish-Israeli society has become so delusional, so demented, so arrogant, so psychotic, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were carrying on around the liner’s bar or buffet. More than 80% of Jewish Israelis support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and if anything feel that Netanyahu needs to get on with the job more effectively (while bringing home Jewish-Israeli “hostages”, whose lives are worth more than all of the Palestinians put together). Even when US support for Israel eventually evaporates, as it will one day, even when Israel’s economy implodes, even when Israel’s neighbours properly stand their ground, even when the Palestinians achieve victory, they’ll still be singing, because they resembled a crazed cult. We’re going to have to be very patient for this evil to disappear from the planet.

We went for a beer. The day had started out as social gathering and the cheering that pulsated at the close of the protest amounted to a form of undiluted collective joy. I’m embarrassed that I don’t speak Greek yet lost count of the number of people I got to meet during the day, young and old, local and visiting, everyone friendly, everyone wanting to engage, everyone was bound by basic decency, which is the starting point for opposing the most heinous crime that exists on this planet, a crime that has been unfolding in front of our eyes for the last twenty-one months. It was one of the most beautiful social experiences of my life. I’ll be extremely happy if I ever get to experience anything like this again. I salute everyone who showed up that morning and afternoon. Civil disobedience works, with or without red paint.

As we caught our breath reports started to appear, beginning with Greece’s Sky News. The Israeli government had responded immediately and was pressuring the Greek government into some kind of action, alarmed that its citizens weren’t being offered the same kind of welcome and of course “rights” that were afforded to tourists from other parts of the world. Greece, I’ve been learning, has become one of Israel’s most important allies in Europe. Even the supposedly left-wing Syriza government deepened the military collaboration between the two countries, just one of countless signs of Zionism’s ever-deepening grip over western governments.

It’s hard not to wonder if the police officer who took charge of yesterday’s operation will be demoted for behaving like a human being; I hope not. It’s also hard not to wonder what the Greek government, under pressure from Israel, will do to defend the rights of Israeli tourists over its own citizens when the cruise liner returns next year. Greece and the rest of the world must bend to the demands of Jewish citizens of Israel, perpetual victims who see antisemitism everywhere except when they look in the mirror, which is where it can really be found, so catastrophically damaging has Zionism become for the Jewish people.

News of the anti-Zionist victory spread fast through social media. I didn’t get to look at this too much but Niki fed through updates from Twitter. Prominent Israeli scholars were cheering the resistance, Greek citizens expressed their joy. It seemed that news of a small-scale local protest was becoming a story. Even the Guardian, which as far as I’m aware hasn’t carried a single report on the Palestine solidarity movement in the UK, even though it amounts to the biggest protest movement in UK history by some distance, carried a report. Maybe they filed it under “foreign exotica”, the kind of “hot-headed” act that can happen in the Mediterranean.

Jewish-Israeli holiday makers who were on board the cruise ship also took to Twitter. One posted: “Let no one set foot on their shitty island, let them starve.” I thought, cute, this sums up everything, the voice of the spoilt child who wants something badly and when they don’t get what they want throw a tantrum. The comment also revealed Zionism psychotic mindset. They’re not just ready to starve the Palestinians they haven’t already murdered (300,000 are reported missing). They wish starvation on anyone anyone who dares to stand in their way, for they believe they are the chosen people and the chosen people, like the German Nazis, can do whatever they like thanks to their pact with god. Maybe they can call on god to intervene, as they mythologically did when the Israelites fled Egypt. And if they can’t call on god then they can call on Trump, Starmer, Merz and company to assist them in their genocidal work.

Another Jewish-Israeli passenger posted of the protestors, of us: “They’re jobless, clearly, and they don’t look like Greeks either.” There’s really no need to unpack this kind of disgusting comment but I can’t resist resisting. The Zionists wanted to land in Syros as part of their island-hopping excursion. From coach drivers to shop assistants to chefs, many of the workers who support the seasonal tourism industry that the Jewish-Israel tourists were all too willing to enjoy work irregular hours that would have enabled them to attend a daytime protest while others would have set aside freelance deadlines in order to take a moral stand.

It also seemed to be beyond the imagination of the colonialist poster maybe some Greek people were also on vacation. Jewish-Israelis can go on holidays, the Zionist state can be entirely propped up by a nonstop flow of US and European financial support, the Israeli stock market can double in value during the genocide enabling investors to go on luxury cruise tours of the Greek islands, yet if you’re not part of the chosen people you’re degenerate, a lazy unemployed person, and therefore disposable.

The comment also reveals the unhinged arrogance of the Jewish-Israeli psyche. From the distance of the cruise ship, docked maybe 300 meters from the protest barricade, and having never met any of those present, the Jewish-Israeli holiday is “clear” not only that the protestors are jobless but don’t look like Greeks. What kind of twisted thinking is required for someone to go public with such idiocy? Leaving aside the simple fact that anything between 95-99% of the gathering was Greek, the comment that “they don’t look like Greeks either” reveals a contorted nationalist-racist logic. First, ethno-supremacist Israelis get to be the judges of authenticity. Second, if they judge you’re not authentic, a pure-blood, as they imagine themselves to be, then your opinions don’t count. In this case an analysis made from a distance of 300 meters has it that the protestors aren’t “real Greeks” so have no more claim over to what should happen on the island than the Jewish-Israeli holiday makers. Wherever they go Zionists see their rights as being more deserving and important than the rights of others and believe it to be their right to trample on whomever they like in order to do whatever they like.

It’s possible for a colonial fascist to develop some self-awareness and change but there’s no evidence of self-awareness here. Meanwhile Israel’s Genetic Information Law makes it impossible for Israeli citizens to conduct a DNA test without court order. There’s only way to properly understand this: successive Israeli governments have understood that the kind of testing that’s allowed everywhere else in the world will reveal that a potentially significant proportion of Jewish-Israelis of European descent won’t be able to trace their lineage back to biblical Palestine, and without that the whole fascistic fiction would collapse.

The creation of Israel was and remains a tragedy of epic proportions for the Palestinian people and humanity. From the beginning it has been based on the inability of Zionist protagonists to understand their flaws and their limitations. One day there will be a resolution and a form of justice will be served. The resistance of Syros, an island that is said to be the birthplace of Hermes, the great messenger of the gods, will have made its own micro-contribution to that outcome, as it shouted with gusto and belief a clear and simple message: “Free, free Palestine!”